Field
The disclosed technology relates to graphics processing, including traversing a hierarchical structure to determine ray-object intersections for ray tracing.
Description of the Related Technology
Ray tracing is a computer graphics technique to generate images by tracing paths of light through a three dimensional scene, simulating interactions with objects illuminated by light sources, and finding ray-primitive, or ray-object intersections. Ray tracing may generate realistic images, including shadows. In order to accelerate the process of ray tracing, scene geometry may be stored in an acceleration data structure, or hierarchy, that groups scene primitives. Examples of acceleration data structures (hierarchies) in use include bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) trees, KD-trees, and grids. Ray tracing methods traverse these hierarchies to determine ray-object intersections.